Forget your perfect offering
by callmesandy
Summary: Some mysterious entity force downloaded memories of what will happen to a supergroup of super smarties. (Unlike some people, the entity remembered Jane Foster.) They meet in Wakanda to save the whole universe!


Not mine, no profit garnered. For the marvel big bang. Title from leonard Cohen's anthem. Thanks a! A portion of this story was posted previously by me on ao3.

* * *

Breathe in, breathe out. In and out. In and count one, two, three and out. Jane repeated it, eyes closed. She tried to do this every morning when she woke up. She was really bad about doing it every morning when she woke up. But she tried. It was a really nice bed, great sheets. She had work to do but beginning the day with meditation was a good idea. She believed in it.

Breathe in. She cleared her mind. Watch the thoughts and wave to them like passing cars.

Then there was light white red on the edges saturating her brain pulsing in her teeth. She could feel her brain overwhelmed and flooded. It was different from the AEther, it was something else, something focused entirely on her brain. Her poor brain. Her face vibrated in pain and she was crying.

She got up and stumbled out of bed. She twitched and managed to stand up. This was shaping up to be quite a day. Jane somehow showered and got dressed and made it out of her bedroom.

There was a blue woman sitting at her coffee table. "I was about to kill my father," she said. Jane knew her name was Nebula.

"Actually, you weren't," Jane said. "I can see the future. Can I see the future?"

"No," Nebula said. "Some force has downloaded memories to our heads. Memories of the future."

"Okay, then," Jane said. "I guess we better get to work." She walked to the counter. "After coffee. Do you want coffee?"

Nebula frowned. "No sugar."

Jane made the coffee. Nebula sipped her cup and frowned. She said, "Last time I had this drink, it was a lighter color."

"Did it have cream? Here," Jane said. She walked over with her cashew nut creamer. She poured some in. "Is that a better color?"

Nebula kept frowning. She sipped it again. "This is right. Tastes better." Nebula drank the entire mug. She said, "You're not in my downloaded memories. Just the compulsion to come here. How are you important?"

"I'm very smart," Jane said. "I guess? I didn't get to do much of anything the first time around. Apparently. Even my memories, the new ones, I'm off to the side. Working on other things. I saw people turning to dust. Heard about others." She poured herself another cup of coffee. "Maybe I can get involved this time and actually do something."

"When did you do something before now?"

"Well, I had an infinity stone inside me, so that counts as important, right?"

"Yes," Nebula said. "And you survived?"

"Yes, I'm here now," Jane said. "Making coffee. What's our next stop? Wakanda. They just opened their borders. Turns out they're incredibly technologically advanced. Maybe they've already developed time travel."

"You talk a lot," Nebula said.

"Just because you're here. I work alone these days. I do have lab assistants, but we're not friends." She started more coffee. "How do we even get to Wakanda?"

"I have a space ship," Nebula said. "Do we need to pick up anyone else?"

They didn't, it seemed. Jane looked around the ship as she strapped in and said, "Not my first time in a spaceship. Though this time, I'm not barely conscious and having to listen to two brothers fighting."

"I have a sister," Nebula said. "She's also my friend. If we do this correctly, she won't die."

"Good motivation," Jane said.

X

Mr. Stark finally showed up, not that he actually took that long. But Peter had woken up after his brain boiled and he had to talk to the guy. Anytime felt too long. Tony said, "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"No, no, I should not. Mr. Stark, someone shoved something into my head this morning and it has to do with the future. I know that sounds really stupid, but it's true. The future of the universe."

"Sure it wasn't just the aftereffect of some edibles? Those can lay you out good," Tony said.

"I've never had one," Peter said. "I haven't even gotten drunk. Seriously, Karen did a brainscan. Something wrote on my brain."

"That sounds unpleasant," Tony said. He tapped his glasses and Peter was pretty sure Mr. Stark's AI was telling him the same thing.

"It was the future. I die, half the universe dies, you die, Mr. Stark," Peter said. "And you bring everyone back? Technically, Doctor Banner did."

"Nice of him, I haven't seen him in nearly two years, though," Mr. Stark said.

"I know, he was on this other planet. But I guess maybe he's coming back now? I don't know. I think other people got downloads." Peter felt he wasn't explaining this well. "It's the guy who sent Loki and the alien invaders back when I was a kid. He's the one who's going to kill everybody. At least half the universe."

"Shit," Mr. Stark said. "Well, what does your download want us to do?"

"I think we're supposed to reinvent time travel and do the whole end of the world differently," Peter said. "I might, maybe we should call Ned. And MJ. They're very smart."

"Yes, we should call every single smart person you know," Mr. Stark said. "The more the merrier."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but if you'd seen what I've seen -"

"I've seen enough," Mr. Stark said. "Let's start small."

Tony somehow convinced May it was okay, and by the end of the day the two of them were flying to Wakanda.

Where Doctor Banner, Doctor Foster and a blue alien lady who seemed very angry were there already.

Shuri smiled and said, "I guess we are supposed to save the universe again."

X

They sat in Shuri's fantastic lab. Bruce explained how he and Tony had constructed the first time machine. Tony had a lot of comments, like he was figuring it all out again himself.

It was odd he hadn't gotten the download. Maybe because he died? Jane didn't say that out loud.

Shuri and Jane had both looked at the schematics and immediately started tinkering. Things just leapt out at Jane. It was just obvious. They were coming from different angles but it was good, they were already improving it. Jane could see the whole picture and she knew there were places that could be more efficient. "You should have called us the first time," she said. "Why didn't you call me?" Why wouldn't you have called me, she thought. Whatever tense would work.

"I don't know," Bruce said. "We didn't think of time travel until Scott showed up."

Peter sat back and looked over at Nebula. He was very very young. Peter said, "Since we know what's coming, do we even need this? If we've worked out the time line correctly -"

"We have," Shuri said, confidently.

"Then we theoretically could just stop Thanos now?"

"I will happily go kill my father," Nebula said. She was a very angry alien person. Who liked cinnamon and cream in her coffee. Darcy would have said something pithy about that. Jane missed working with Darcy. She just plain missed Darcy.

Jane looked up from the mechanics. She should call Darcy. She shouldn't let things stay the way they were now.

"No, it's too late," Bruce said. "He already has the AEther and the stone from Zandar. That was enough to kill Loki and Heimdall. According to the schedule, he'll do that in two weeks. These are very powerful Asgardians. We need to stop him at a different time."

Nebula looked around the lab. She said, "Make me a weapon, Gamora and I can kill him."

Tony said, "We're gonna give you an incredibly powerful weapon, we're going to find a way to do this that makes Thanos weak so you can really make him suffer."

Nebula nodded. "Fine," she said with a huff.

Jane would have forgotten about meals, but working with Peter meant there was always someone who was just starving. "Sorry I'm always hungry, Dr. Foster," he said.

The first day, the second day, they made a lot of progress.

Jane texted Darcy at midnight. She kept it short. 'Hi, I wanted to say I miss you.' She walked around the massive kitchen and made coffee. She didn't really recognize the brand, but she assumed it would be good. She thought the coffee she'd been drinking so far had been pretty good. But Darcy had told her a million times she couldn't taste anything. "You've fried your tongue because you never take any time to savor," Darcy had said.

She missed Thor, too, but she was used to that. She was lonely.

Jane sat down to savor. Bruce wandered in and went to a different cabinet. He pulled out tea. "It's pretty late at night for coffee, especially that coffee. I think that's the most caffeinated coffee I've ever tasted."

"You can taste the caffeine?"

"I can feel the effect pretty quick," Bruce said. He ran his hand through his hair.

No wonder, Jane thought, Black Widow had been hot for him. Thor had told her. Bruce wasn't her type of person, but he was definitely attractive.

Darcy would tell her she was lonely. She would have said it before Jane realized it. Here she was with great minds around her, working on a fascinating puzzle, and she was unsettled. Lonely. She needed to make up with Darcy. And maybe have sex. Bruce said, "What do you think of what we're doing?"

"I think it's an idea," Jane said. "Of course, it also feels like we're starting with a lot of assumptions and then working from those. We've already defined the experiment before we have all the data."

"Well, I have the memories of how awful everything was up close -"

Bruce stopped talking when the kid walked in. He had turned out to be pretty smart and very open to new concepts. Good team player, she thought. She should tell his teachers. Peter said, "Don't stop on my account. Just getting some juice. I don't even know what fruit this is. Do you know?"

King T'Challa walked in and Jane tried, again, not to be flustered. She definitely had a type and it was apparently royalty with hearts of gold and near physical perfection. The King said, "I do know. I can show you the trees. Tomorrow."

"Right, back to bed," Peter said. He drank his juice in three gulps and went to back out the same way.

Jane said, "Me, too," and tried not to giggle as she waved goodbye. She fell asleep thinking about Thor, remembering the time they'd actually shared a bed on Earth. Long time ago, she thought.

The next day, shortly after lunch, they got it to work. They didn't need any Pym particles with Shuri and Jane's improvements.

They reached the point where it was time to experiment. "We need to actually plan this out," Jane said.

"Agreed," Shuri said. "We need to start by making sure we actually have data."

Jane was their first one to go back using the new way. "I don't need superpowers to observe and take notes."

Jane went back to New Mexico, after everything was empty and they'd all moved on to England. The town was largely empty, though Jane noted some people were already moving back. Some people refused to be chased out. Jane went back to the outside of her old lab and planted a seed for a native to New Mexico succulent. When she came back, Stark's drones showed the succulent was still there, still growing after three years. "Looking at the satellite pictures we see you plant it and then it grows."

Jane had stored the previous satellite photos on her phone that she took with her. The pictures where nothing was planted were still there.

"Great," Peter said. "Why don't we go back and get those stones Thanos has right now?"

Everyone sat back and thought. Jane said, "The AEther is just at the Collector's. Was at. Thor said that was where it was."

Nebula said, "Father will have brought all his forces to bear on Zandar. He wouldn't waste a whole army on that creep."

King T'Challa had joined them since they were now planning strategies, not science. Shuri had called him. "What do you do with the aether once you have it?"

Bruce said, "Bring it here and destroy it, like the mindstone. Wanda can do it." Bruce sat up straighter. "Wait, why don't we just get Vision here now? Last time we didn't, we won't have enough time to remove the mindstone from Vision, but now we do. Shuri can do it. And Wanda can destroy it. She can destroy both."

"You're placing a lot of faith in her," Tony said. "Which isn't such a bad idea." Tony passed a flip phone to Bruce. "Get 'em here."

"I have to make the phone call," Bruce said. "Okay."

Jane said, "I take it Shuri and I are staying here -"

"Yeah," Tony said. "Me and the kid and Murder Smurf should be able to get the aether. Bruce, I take it you'd rather stay."

Bruce nodded.

Ten hours later, Vision was there and Jane joined Shuri in working on the extraction. It wasn't Jane's real expertise but she could help with something.

The three that went to get the aether showed up back in the chamber Shuri had made, all looking immensely worse for wear. Peter looked like half his body had been on fire. He sat down immediately and said, "It's okay, I can heal."

"No, we want help," Tony said, forcefully as Shuri turned away from Vision.

Nebula said, "It didn't work. Thanos showed up as were getting the stone. We need to go earlier."

Jane said, "Won't that upset the timeline?"

"I don't know," Nebula said. "Someone figure that out."

Shuri frowned. "I don't know. I don't know, this is hard to figure out."

Bruce said, "In my memories there was a whole explanation from the Ancient One about not interfering with time. We did something wrong."

Bruce pulled Jane aside to analyze data from the stars and figure out if the first attempt had changed anything.

Three hours later, the data wasn't looking good. Peter was, though, he wasn't kidding about that healing power. Bruce said, "I compared the data with what we knew before, what was on Tony's phones when he went back."

"Thanos came because we went there," Tony said. "The timeline was defending itself."

Nebula drank more of her cinnamon latte. She said, "Yes. I think what we tried wasn't the way to do it. We could still go back again."

Shuri leaned further in. She said, "What if we try something else? I have an idea for something else."

X

Peter slept badly. He usually slept badly. Even in Wakanda and in the King's palace, and in the room he'd been provided which had some kind of mattress that molded to Peter's body and offered support like nothing he'd ever slept on in his life, Peter slept badly. It wasn't his injuries. He'd completely recovered from being burned alive by something the Collector had, not even a scar.

Thanks to Shuri, Peter could call MJ on one of the cool beads that meant he could see her like in a hologram. It was all more technical than that and he'd really loved when Shuri had explained how everything had worked. But in the middle of the night, he just liked talking to MJ and seeing her.

MJ said, "Why are you awake now?"

"I told you, I slept badly," Peter said. "It works out great, though, cause I can call you and it's early evening there. Time zones."

"I'm familiar with them. Did you have a nightmare? You have a lot of those." She said it without much emphasis so it didn't feel judgey. After he left, Ned told him MJ had totally figured out that Peter was Spiderman and Ned had crumbled under her stern glare. Now he could call her and see her and not have to come up with some reason he was in Wakanda. He was in Wakanda and working with Shuri, that was awesome. He sighed.

"I don't have nightmares," Peter said. "I don't wake up screaming or anything like that. I just wake up."

"You wake up suddenly but you're totally rested," MJ said. She did not sound sincere.

"Not really," Peter said. "But it's not horrible dreams. It's just, like, people yelling at me and failing tests and like, my uncle Ben isn't really dead and then I wake up and he is actually dead." Thanos killing him, Thanos nearly killing him. He didn't tell her about that. He wasn't really up to articulating that to anyone just yet. He had a lot of bad memories of Thanos.

Now MJ wasn't deadpan. She said, "Those sound pretty shitty. I think you'd wake up un-rested and be unsettled all day."

"Basically. But it's not horrible nightmare wake up crying stuff," Peter said. "That's a nightmare."

"So all those imported memories of you dying and seeing Tony die -" Peter had made a mistake telling Ned. MJ continued, "You don't have bad dreams about that."

"No, I have intrusive thoughts and sudden flashbacks during the day about those and my other traumas," Peter said. He actually smiled.

"You've been on WebMD," MJ said. "Please tell me you're not diagnosing through tumblr."

"No, of course not," Peter said. "But like, I'm fine. Really. I have an app with a little robot who asks me how I'm doing. I have Ned and you!"

"Yeah, calling me at three am is exactly like therapy and medication," she said. She looked really beautiful as she said it.

Shuri was super easy to work with. She was hilarious, too. If Peter didn't already have a huge crush on MJ, he would definitely be crushing on her. He probably was anyway. But she was even more out of his league than MJ. Anyway, it wasn't the most important thing. The most important thing was Shuri's method which Bruce started calling the Quantum Leap method. "Like the television show," he said, smiling.

It only took a day to develop. The machines were still working on Vision.

Nebula, Shuri and Peter watched a few episodes on the Wakandan version of satellite TV. "Our method is not nearly as crude," Shuri said.

"What an awful show," Nebula said. She cued up the next episode. "How many more are there?"

"I don't think we're watching any more," Peter said. "Unless you want to?"

Nebula sighed heavily. "You're an idiot." She got up and took the TV device with her.

After she left, Peter said to Shuri, "And we're not going to strand anyone. Right?"

"Yes, of course," Shuri said. She sat back in her chair and looked down at her rings. She flexed her fingers. "Sometimes I think I would love to go back and just push my father out of the way. Let him live. I know it's wrong."

"Yeah," Peter said. "I would save my parents, and my uncle Ben. But we're only working on this one thing because of the scale, right? It's half the universe. And then more people die and when they come back, they come back too late. It's just because of the scale."

"My father feels like the whole universe," Shuri said. She was definitely not looking at him.

"Same, I know. I know. But that's, it sucks, but it wasn't an alignment of multiple massive events," Peter said. "It super sucks, though. It's natural, I guess, as much as murder and bombs and car accidents are natural. But I know, the feelings feel like, like everything's wrong. It's not the way it's supposed to be."

Shuri inhaled and wiped at her eyes. Peter did the same. She said, "We are both in an awful organization, dead fathers."

"Well, me and Tony are in the both parents dead club and the dead father surrogate club. So we're more exclusive than you for once," Peter said. "Please don't kill me for saying that. Or have your brother kill me."

"I would have the Dora do it," Shuri said.

"I would be so dead," Peter said.

Peter went first this time, embedded in his own brain. He was about a quarter there, enough to observe and urge. They sent him forward to Titan and he made sure they told Quill beforehand Gamora was likely dead. "Probably," Peter said. "You can't freak out when we're trying to take off his glove, okay?"

That actually worked. They got the glove off and then out of nowhere, Thor came in. He looked great. He had this ax and he literally beheaded Thanos.

It was all working perfectly. Peter decided to wait it out to see what happened next, just in case.

Thor and everyone defeated Thanos's army. Back in Wakanda, Peter thought. Then his sense of danger started to go off. Thor was arguing with Dr. Strange. Peter got close enough and heard that Thor wanted to use the time stone and the other stones to go back in time and stop Thanos before he killed Thor's brother and best friend. Peter understood the impulse but he raised his hand to say something -

And he was back in his body in Wakanda. "What, what happened?"

He described everything to their little working group and they determined that Thor's attempt to go back in time must have created a loop that crashed everything. "But I came back okay, so that's good," Peter said.

"I can't believe Quill didn't ruin everything," Nebula said.

"We'll keep trying that point. I think it's a good inflection point," Bruce said.

Vision was still entwined.

X

Tony screamed at Bruce that stopping Thanos mid snap wasn't good enough. It wasn't enough that only one quarter of all humanity and life was gone. One quarter. Bruce said they could try something else and then there was nothing. Tony was somewhere, somewhere different and advanced and he was looking at himself. A slightly different himself. And Bruce and Jane Foster and the kid and Nebula and Shuri, princess of Wakanda.

"What the fuck is going on?"

Nebula said, "Why is he here? How did he come back?" She had her gun out, aimed at him.

Bruce said, "I don't know, I don't know. I was in my own head and then this happened. Let's not kill him."

"This is an interesting result," Shuri said. Tony stared out the window. He was in Wakanda. A fully populated non battlefield Wakanda.

"Hey there, handsome," the Other Tony said. "Sorry about this but looks like your timeline went boom."

"How is that even possible?" Thor's more brilliant ex said. "We aren't sending full people back and forward."

"But we're creating avenues or streams," Bruce said. "Which brought this guy back."

"I'd like to go home," Tony said. "I bet that's not possible."

"No," Shuri said. "I'm very sorry."

X

They tried different inflection points. They tried a number of them. It was intensely upsetting as they went back over and over again and still they ended up with a snap or a collapsed time loop. They even brought back two more people, Natasha Romanoff and Valkyrie.

Jane rarely went back, but she heard debrief after debrief of what went wrong. So much death, so much loss.

"This sucks. We will never stop my father," Nebula said. She was always such a bright beacon of hope.

Every time Jane went back to Vision and helped slowly disentangling him. It wasn't working. It was taking too long.

"Thank you for trying, Dr. Foster," Vision said. He was generally in some kind of stasis in between sessions.

Jane asked Bruce if Wanda was coming. "I don't know," Bruce said. "I talked to Cap and he's going to try. But she's more offline than the others."

Then they did it. They found the point. Nebula went back in the Quantum Leap method and they sent the out of time Valkyrie back in Tony Stark method. "May as well," Valkyrie had said. "See how this turns out."

Jane woke up and breathed in and out. She got out of bed and she was back. Not in Wakanda. She remembered everything but she knew it hadn't happened. It hadn't had to happen. She opened the bedroom door and there, once again, was Nebula.

Nebula said, "I killed my father three years ago. The Valkyrie woman. She died. I've had to wait three years to tell someone who would care."

"I'm sorry," Jane said. She looked down at her pajamas and then back at Nebula. "You look different."

Nebula frowned. She said, "My father got the reality stone right before we attacked, me and Valkyrie and Captain Marvel. Thanos thought he would weaken me by taking away my modifications. He was wrong."

"That's good, right? Better than you were?"

Nebula shrugged. "Maybe. It is less painful."

"So, what do you do now?" Jane went straight to the coffee. "After fulfilling your life's mission and everything?"

"I tried a few things. Didn't like it. Now I'm a scavenger." Nebula devoured her coffee. It was disturbing. "It's been odd, having a body again."

"It's a very nice body," Jane said. "I like your hair."

"I'm not interested in you," Nebula said. "You're too short. I don't know how Thor managed it."

Jane shrugged. "He bent down."

X

Peter went back to Wakanda. They were having a funeral for Valkyrie, just a few weeks before the one from this timeline was going to show up. It would be like Peter already knew her. He hadn't actually known Valkyrie all that well, mostly he would get juice at night and she would be drinking some kind of Wakanda alcohol Peter refused to taste.

The other Tony and Black Widow were at the palace in Wakanda. "They set off the alarms - the palace had no records of them," Shuri said. "My brother couldn't understand how Tony Stark was in one of the guest rooms. Natasha has been back and forth since then but -"

"I'm older," Natasha said. She had come from a time they tried in 2014, but she had been sent back from 2023. Peter wasn't sure he would notice the difference, but he bet the King could. "But now we get to stay as long as we like."

"It's the least we can do," the King said.

The other Mr. Stark just frowned. He was much quieter than Mr. Stark but it was understandable.

"What about Vision?" Bruce said. He'd come back just that morning. "Did we do all that for nothing?"

"Yes," Shuri said, sighing. "I guess we can start again. We should start again."

"Do we need to?" The other Mr. Stark said, "We don't need to destroy the mind stone. We already know it will take more than a week to do."

"It might be worth it, if we can destroy it," King T'Challa said. "Just because we stopped Thanos doesn't mean that someone else, somewhere in this galaxy won't try again. Call your Vision here and we can offer it to him."

"Time to reconcile with Cap," the other Mr. Stark said. "I guess Bruce gets to send out that olive branch."

"I already did it," Mr. Stark said as he entered. The man loved making an entrance. "This morning before I came here."

"There you are," Jane said.

"Nice to see you, too, Dr. Foster," Mr. Stark said.

"I think," Peter said. "I think I have a theory of where all our memories came from. Or I have a theory. I was talking with my friend Ned -" Peter definitely noticed three people roll their eyes. Apparently he said that a lot? "Ned kept repeating it was half the universe. The entire universe. Now, we already know there are other civilizations that are very advanced on other planets - maybe they lose half their family and decide to fix it. As best they can."

"That, that makes sense," Bruce said.

"Everyone knows Terra is a shithole," Nebula said. She looked weird without her modifications. Not bad, but very different. She had hair. It looked like she cut it herself whenever it annoyed her, but it was definitely her hair.

Peter said, "Are we, like, known for anything other than being a shithole?"

"Violent shithole," Nebula said. "Unpredictable stupidity."

Jane shrugged. "Sounds about right."

"But in the first iteration of this, the one they made you remember, it was the unpredictable stupid shitholers who brought people back and killed Thanos," Mr. Stark said. "Probably didn't give it to me since I was dead."

"Good theory, kid," the Other Mr. Stark said.

Natasha said, "Okay, so aliens did it. Then you guys did your own Wakanda Project and saved the universe again. What happens to all the time travel technology? Shouldn't we hold on to that?"

Peter said, "But it's just for really big emergencies. Like half the universe emergencies. The timeline does not like us screwing with it."

"Agreed," Shuri said. "We'll keep it here."

"Works for me," Mr. Stark said. "I trust you most of all."

"But I think there's a lot to be learned," Jane said. "Maybe we can refine it."

Shuri said, "Why don't you come here to do that? We enjoy your company. It could be fun."

"I'm cool leaving it be," Mr. Stark said.

"Same," Peter said.

"I killed my father three years ago. I'm done," Nebula said. "I'm planning to go back to space."

The other Mr. Stark said, "That might be interesting. If you want company."

"Not really, but you would be helpful," Nebula said.

"I'm very helpful," Natasha said.

Bruce said, "But, guys, once an idea's out there, it's out there. It can be done so people will try. People and aliens are already trying."

Natasha said, "Who else knows?"

"The aliens who gave us the memories, Captain Marvel, all of us, my friend Ned -" Peter said.

"It's in the air," Bruce said. "We should be on the lookout. Be prepared."

"I'm fine refining what we did," Jane said. "We'll be ready." She sounded like she didn't need a reason, she just wanted to work on it. Peter understood that, but time travel was almost too big to just tinker and explore, at least to him.

X

Thor came to Earth with all his people and Loki and Valkyrie and Heimdall. Bruce was waiting in Norway. Jane decided to go, too. A lot had changed and she knew she was absolutely right to break up with Thor the first time but that didn't mean she had to keep away.

He smiled when he saw her and waved. Then he went back to all his work but he kept looking back at her as he helped people get off the ship. She sat on the road and drank her coffee. Then she called Darcy.

She hadn't had some big public falling out like Stark and the other Avengers but she'd had an argument with Darcy. Lots of stupid angry words. Lots of frustration. So after the time travel project, she'd called Darcy. Then she actually flew out to Bali so they could talk. Also, Darcy had a job in Bali and it was beautiful. Nice place to make up. Now she was in Norway, trying to maybe make up with her ex-boyfriend.

After an hour or so, he came over and said, "Hello, Jane. Here you are! How nice."

"I missed you," she said. "I was trying to think of some way to seem, like, cool. But I don't have it in me. I'm not good at that at all."

"I think you're very cool," he said.

"Show me your new place," she said.

It was a great place. With all the busyness of moving in and settling in their new space and Norway government issues and new alien citizens, it was really about two weeks before Jane even had a chance to just talk to Thor. She told him about the time travel and Thanos. He said, "That sounds horrible. Thank you for preventing it."

"I was just a part of it," Jane said.

"Time travel is thorny issue," Thor said. "If I could I would save Asgard, save my mother. How do we know which things need to happen and which we can tamper with?"

"That is an issue many people brought up," Jane said. "I feel like if we refine it, we can find a way to make it more seamless."

"But you won't be the only one trying to do that. Time travel has been a constant quest, throughout all the ages," Thor said. "You can't assume you'll be the only ones to discover a method of it."

"We found two ways to do it," Jane said.

"You're all very clever," Thor said.

"Thank you," Jane said. "So you don't think I should focus on refining time travel."

"I'd prefer you stay here and work on something else, but I'm no one's King."

"That is clearly false," she said. "But I will take that into consideration."

Thor bent down to kiss her, not the first time in Norway, but the first time they could do something about it after. More than kissing. Thor had a huge bed. A huge wonderful bed, nearly as nice as Wakanda's. But this bed had Thor and his lovely hands and abs and she had not just missed having sex but very specifically sex with Thor. He said he missed her, too.

X

Peter had had to tell MJ all over again that he was Spiderman and he knew she knew. He even, finally, asked her out. They went on dates, it was awesome.

He kept in touch with everyone from the time travel project. Which really should have had a cool codename or something. And Wakanda Project like Manhattan Project didn't quite work for Peter. He was on a group chat with everyone. Mostly at this point it was Dr. Foster sending pictures from Norway and other personal updates. Thor was really incredibly attractive.

With Shuri, though, he talked to her all the time. She preferred face to face sort of using the bead communicators. There was also a kind of Wakanda only Facebook that was so much better than Facebook and didn't involve any privacy violations. It was like a combination of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Tumblr but still better than all of those. Peter was one of only a handful people on there who wasn't Wakandan.

He showed it to MJ and Ned and they basically died. "That is so incredible," Ned said.

"You should take us there," MJ said.

"Someday," Peter said.

Mr. Stark got married and Peter was invited. With a plus one, so he took MJ. She got really dressed up and she looked amazing. Different from her usual amazing.

He had actually been seeing a lot of Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark had done a lot of Shuri Quantum Leaps and had apparently seen Peter die more than a few times. Peter still had the memories from the aliens of Tony dying in front of him and his own few instances from the Shuri Quantum Leaps. So they were both really huggy and happy to see each other. It was nice to overlay every memory of Tony dead or dying with actual Tony being happy or annoyed or concentrating. He was very happy on his wedding day.

Nebula even flew back from her exciting interstellar adventures. "Bounty hunting," she said to Peter. "Looking for criminals like I used to be."

"That sounds awesome," Peter said. MJ was just staring. Peter said, " How are the other Mr. Stark and other Natasha?"

"Fine," Nebula said. "We don't share our feelings." She sounded like she was talking about manure.

Tony found him and MJ sitting in surprisingly comfortable chairs on the edge of the dance floor. He said, "You're youths. Shouldn't you be dancing? Getting down?"

"If you say twerking I will drown myself in that chocolate fountain," MJ said.

"Now I want to say it," Tony said.

"Please don't," Peter said. "Nice to see everyone here. Boy, Thor, huh?"

Tony nodded. MJ said, "Wow, Thor. Also King T'Challa. Another wow."

"You know, I'm humble enough, you don't have to pretend you're not impressed to meet me," Tony said, smiling.

"And Captain America," MJ said. "Also, wow, Pepper Potts."

"Absolutely agree on that last one," Tony said. "Can you believe she married me?"

"No," MJ said.

"Now I have to ask you to dance with me," Tony said.

"Hey," Peter said. He wasn't actually upset. MJ looked really shy on the dance floor, it was adorable. Also Captain America was way more tolerable than those PSA videos made him seem.

So things were basically great. Peter was a fantastic Spiderman with an awesome suit that Shuri and Tony and Peter had worked on. Fantastic girlfriend, awesome best friend. School was going well. The three of them did really great on their SATs.

One night Peter was swinging through Queens and he heard a scream so he swung that way and then his spidey sense went insane and Peter twisted away from whatever it was -

Whatever it was was some kind of metal that had impaled him in his chest and he barely made it to the roof of a building. He hit every panic button he could think of but mostly he couldn't think. It hurt to breathe and he had to breathe and someone was standing over him. Bad Guy said, "How are you not dead yet? I did it right this time." Then he was gone and/or Peter stopped seeing things. He was in so much pain he just wanted to pass out and then he did.

X

Jane got the update over an urgent group text. She showed it to Thor. "Spiderman got impaled by some kind of spear, it just missed his heart. And apparently that sorcerer you ran into, he was right there. Otherwise Peter would be dead."

"Dr. Strange," Thor said. "He survived? Peter?"

"So far," Jane said. "It was just last night, things are touch and go."

"Do you want to go to him?"

"I can't do anything and Peter, he's very, he's such a nice kid, he probably has a million people waiting for him in the waiting room. I would just be in the way," Jane said. And she was working with Heimdall on a kind of analysis into tracking the time stream if it existed as a stream. It sounded awful in her head. But she really couldn't do anything.

Then her phone was ringing.

"Thor got you here quick," Bruce said, smiling.

"He went right back," Jane said. "There's a lot going on setting up new Asgard. But, we think someone time traveled to kill Peter?"

"Let's get the full briefing," Bruce said.

The full briefing was from Dr. Strange who was an arrogant prick and Jane felt really bad for Peter having to have this guy save his life. He seemed like the type that would expect Peter to grovel in thanks. Jane was probably biased. Dr. Strange just reminded her of every single advisor she'd had in her PhD programs who wasn't Eric Selvig. So so many assholes who thought a pretty young thing like Jane couldn't do physics.

Dr. Strange had the time stone, Jane knew that. He monitored the time stream, after a fashion. He'd detected a short of time jumps happening over and over again in Queens. "You think he planned to kill Peter and tried to do it more than once," Bruce said.

"He's hard to kill," Tony said. He looked like shit.

Dr. Strange launched into his explanation and his visuals and Bruce chimed in with questions. Jane followed along and she had thoughts but she didn't like it. She didn't like Dr. Strange and she hated feeling condescended to so much. She got up and walked out. She wandered in the halls of the Avengers facility until she saw someone that had to be Ned sitting on a couch outside an entrance marked "medical."

She sat down and said, "Mind if I sit with you?"

Ned said, "Oh, sure. Sure."

Jane said, "You're Ned, right? Peter talks about you so much and he posted a picture in the group text chain. More than one. Of you two."

"Yeah," Ned said. He almost smiled. "Peter's, he's great."

"I have a best friend," Jane said. "Her name is Darcy. Not like you and Peter, we actually don't have a lot in common. But she's great, too. We got in this stupid, completely asinine fight and I was an asshole and then when we were doing all the time travel stuff, I just realized it was so stupid. Best friends don't just, you know, they don't grow on trees."

"That's very true," Ned said. "You're Dr. Jane Foster, right? We talk about you in Physics class."

"You must have a very advanced Physics class," Jane said. "Sorry, of course you do. I know you don't remember, but you made a lot of great suggestions. When we were working on the time travel. I think Peter said 'Ned made this great suggestion when I was bouncing this idea off him,' about a hundred times."

Ned nodded and smiled. "Sounds like Peter. They think he'll get better."

"He has that amazing healing power. And he's really strong. And he's young, that's always helpful."

Ned nodded again. "Who did this to him?"

"Well, from what Dr. Strange said, someone else who is a bad guy figured out time travel. Or a method of it. The theory is the first time, Peter must have stopped him from whatever he was doing. Then the bad guy redid the loop over and over again until he could attack Peter," Jane said. "Shuri will be here soon, she's even better than anything in this hospital."

"I know," Ned said. "I know. But you know how it is with best friends."

"Totally," Jane said.

She didn't go farther in. She couldn't bear to see Peter's girlfriend or his aunt.

She sat with Ned until Shuri arrived with a flurry of equipment and two Dora Milaje. After saying quick hellos and how are you and please make Peter betters, Jane went back to the briefing room.

Tony had left and it was just Bruce and Dr. Strange. She looked at the work they'd done the screen. She said, "I've been doing some work tracking the time stream. I don't think this graph really captures it. Let me call Heimdall for a moment."

X

When Peter woke up, he wasn't even in pain. He also wasn't in the US anymore. He could tell, just from the air, he was in Wakanda. "Hey, hey."

"Hey," Tony said. Who was somehow there. Tony leaned over and adjusted something by Peter's pillow. "So you're going to live, which is great news. Not what we initially expected."

"That's not good," Peter said. "We're in Wakanda right?"

"Yup," Tony said. "Thanks to the wizard, we went through the yellow brick circle and here you are. Shuri needed all her equipment to keep you alive."

"Yeah, that thing went through my chest."

"Right below your heart, by a centimeter. Still nearly killed you," Tony said. "That was, was awful. I don't know how people do it. I don't know how I can do it."

"Do what?" Peter was on some serious Wakanda drugs. He didn't feel pain, he just felt mostly lucid. But not at his smartest, clearly.

"Have children, have family," Tony said.

"Pepper's pregnant," Peter said. "I knew that. My suit told me."

Tony smiled. "Yes, yes she is. Three months behind schedule if I remember how the timeline was explained to me when we were last here. Anyway, you're going to live. It's wonderful. Even by Wakanda standards you're in bad shape, so it'll be a week before you can go home."

"Okay," Peter said. "Sorry for scaring you. Can I call MJ?" Peter tugged at the blanket, pulling it up to his chin. It was really soft. "We had sex. For the first time. It was pretty good. I heard it was always bad but it was actually pretty good. MJ said it was good which is the important part. You see a lot of movies where having sex means you're going to die. So I hope she doesn't think that."

Tony nearly laughed. "I'm so happy for you. Maybe wait on calling MJ. You're pretty drugged up right now."

"Yeah, yeah," Peter said. "I'm also very sleepy."

He woke up the next day and was so embarrassed. He called MJ and said, "I didn't talk to you yesterday, right?"

"No," she said, laughing. "I'm glad you're alive, by the way."

"Should I have called you earlier? Sorry," Peter said. He was maneuvering around in his bed to sit up. He decided not to look at his chest. Probably still healing.

"Tony called, it's okay." She looked very serious for a moment. "Could you see yourself impaled?"

"Yeah, I didn't pass out right away," Peter said. "It's not a good memory."

"You have too many of those," MJ said. "You really should see an actual facts therapist. Or someone."

"Maybe I'm just amazingly resilient," Peter said.

"Duh, of course you are. But sometimes you don't have to be," she said. "I just want it noted that I'm not interested in dating some tortured neurotic brooding white boy who is so stoic and shit. I like you the way you are."

"I promise not to be stoic?"

"You don't have to be sunshine and light all the time, I just want you to be able to ask for help," MJ said.

"Got it," Peter said.

After he called her, Shuri sat down next to him and updated him on the villain of the piece. "We have video of him from your suit. He was the kind of stupid who comes back and gloats. Jane is all over identifying how he's doing his time jumps."

"How do we know he's not already successful? Maybe we don't remember the changes," Peter said.

"We'll never know for sure, but we do know that so far, he doesn't seem to be as good as it as we are. This Dr. Strange barely saw the work we did, but our bad guy left big, blunt traces. Dr. Foster and her Asgardian friend -"

"Thor," Peter said.

"No, his name is Heimdall. He's very attractive," Shuri said.

"What is with those Asgardians? They're all so pretty," Peter said.

"I know," Shuri said. "But he can see - he can see everything." She sighed, a little dreamily. "Anyway, we're working on it. We're very close to narrowing down who he is."

"Very close?"

"Very close," Shuri said.

X

Jane was trying to work, she was trying to use her knowledge of time travel and the fabric of time and space to identify their bad guy and to see how he was doing it. Naturally, Loki interrupted. She'd managed over the last few months to avoid him even while basically living with Thor. But now she was in Wakanda and somehow Loki was looking over her shoulder. "I just came to check on you now that Heimdall has returned home."

"Really? You had to do it?" Jane kept adding calculations to the big spreadsheet they were all using. Shuri probably had a more elegant term and it was miles ahead of Excel but it was, in the essentials, a spreadsheet.

"Thor is busy," Loki said. "Heimdall is back at work."

"I don't believe you," Jane said. "Not about all that, I don't believe you. Being reformed."

"I understand," Loki said.

"No, I get it. You love your brother, you care about Asgard and its people. I believe that," Jane said. "I don't believe you don't want to still have fun, how you define fun."

"You could be right," Loki said. "In this particular case, right now, I am here to check if you need anything."

"I'm fine," Jane said.

"I will send that message along to Thor. He misses you terribly," Loki said.

"It sounds so gross when you say it," Jane said.

Loki looked at her with so much sheer calculation in his glance. She stared back. She stared until he left but she doubted he'd felt a thing about her.

Bruce came in and said, "He's gone, right?" He looked over her shoulder, checking each calculation.

"I don't know why Thor even sent him. He probably volunteered. I really think he's trying to change, I guess," Jane said. She turned to Bruce. "Let's run these."

Bruce said, "I believe he's changed, Loki. Sure. But that doesn't mean I have to like him. Or want to be around him."

With everything they run they are getting closer and closer to the bad guy. And, while Jane wouldn't admit it, it was a fascinating expansion of her theories about movement through time and space.

Peter went home to recover. Jane stayed because they were so close. "We've already identified who he is, some guy named, weirdly, Bradley Cooper. Same name as the actor from the Hangover," Bruce had told her. "He was on that show Alias, too. The actor, not our time traveler."

The question was how had Peter stabbing Bradley Cooper figured out his crude time travel? How did they stop him? She hated these kind of questions. She wasn't a detective. Not crime detecting.

"We should call Tony for this part," Jane said. "He can figure out the crime part and hunting part and we can figure out all the other stuff."

Thor showed up, again. They sat on her bed and Thor listened to her explain all their progress. She asked about New Asgard. She listened to him and then she said, "This is okay, though? Are you, do you mind I'm working on this so much?" That it was more about the science to her, had always been.

Thor smiled in that distractingly perfect way. "No, not at all. I love your pursuit of knowledge. I look forward to our celebration when you solve this and then the inevitable new question you obsess over. An infinite universe, all waiting for you to solve it."

"But I'm not there with you. I care about all of this, New Asgard, the Asgardians, I do care but maybe you'd be happier with, I don't know. If I were more queenly?"

"You are already a queen," Thor said. "A regal scientist, queen of time space exploration." He laughed, which was, again distractingly attractive and perfect.

"You are flattering me," Jane said.

"Not at all," Thor said. "I am stating the truth. About you and what I love about you, and why we work. As a couple."

"Okay," Jane said. "But you're busy now, what happens when you're just, you know, ruling over a small community of hundreds of demigods and everything's settled?"

"Then we will both find new challenges in doing the things we love," Thor said. "I thought of letting Loki and Valkyrie run more of the day to day and I could do more Avenger adventures or maybe interstellar travel, find some of our wayward Asgardians, see if they'd like to come home."

"You mean travel in space?" Jane grinned. "I really want to do that, too."

"See? We will make it work," Thor said. "Don't you remember how I first fell in love with you? Listening to you talk about space and bridges? It makes you beautiful, your pursuit of knowledge."

"Even though I like to pursue knowledge more than, say, save the world?"

"We have a fair number of people who want to save the world or destroy it, not enough very smart people simply trying to illuminate it. Or at least, so I think," he said. "I don't mind who you are, Jane. That would make for a very bad relationship."

"Exactly," Jane said. "Good. Have I mentioned yet I love you and I missed you?"

"Yes," Thor said. "But I very much enjoy hearing you say it again."

X

Tony and Nat came back from space. They'd figured out that some freak was using crude time travel technology to attack history. Shuri, Jane and Bruce had banged their big brains together and found out how to track the changes and how to counteract them. Jane, bless her scientific heart, was still working on the tracking part. So the alarm went out to the best time stranded bounty hunters in the universe.

The happier Tony, the one who was married and had a newborn baby, had helped miserable Boba Fett Tony Stark design a purse sized instrument to track and carry them around.

So it was an adventure.

Tony scratched at his full beard. It tended to be more period appropriate for all the periods he'd been jumping to. He missed the wild facial hair he'd tried out a time or two while working in outer space.

Luckily a simple suit usually passed muster for the local yokels, even if the looseness of the cut or size of lapels and ties would occasionally stand out as odd. He was much better off than Natasha. If she'd been any kind of normal woman, it might have been hard. But she was a super spy extraordinaire, so she managed to look perfect era appropriate with only a light mugging at most.

She pulled at his wrist lightly. She said, "1963, but Arizona. Phoenix. I guess he's not stopping the JFK assassination."

"Do you know who did that?" Tony said it quietly.

She looked at him with her usual sort of friendly contempt or affectionate judgment. "Lee Harvey Oswald, of course."

Tony paid for a newspaper and took one out. He scanned through each page with his glasses. He took out what looked like an actual paper tablet and looked at the first page. "Well. Well now, wait. I think I know why our friend is here."

He headed for the court house across the street. Natasha trailed behind him. She said, "You're not going to tell me."

"So there's this fella in there who's got a case in court. First round of court, I think," Tony said.

"Go ahead, be coy," Nat said. "What do we need to do?"

"Make sure this rapist gets the right lawyer," Tony said.

They got inside and Natasha worked her spycraft witchery to get them past the nominal security. Then Tony grabbed her wrist. "There he is."

Their favorite friend they'd been chasing across two centuries was wearing a very ugly and period appropriate suit. He was glaring at a group of people, including a lawyer. Nat moved quickly with barely a whisper of fabric so she was right in front of him. "Hello," she said.

The Bad Guy said, "Don't think I won't shoot you right here."

Tony was behind Evil Quantum Leap, pushing a knife into his back. He said, "Don't think I won't stab you right here."

"You'll let this happen, you'll ruin our world," Bad Guy said.

"I'm a fan," Tony said. "Let Ernie have his lawyer."

The group of people had left. Bad Guy leaned suddenly and pushed the knife back towards Tony, Natasha lashed out and just missed both of them. There was a whoosh and a stink of alcohol and Baddie was gone. Tony said, "Fuck. Let's check this way."

Natasha went faster around the corner. Usually their bad guy whooshed out and that meant he was done, but neither of them were taking chances.

Nat said, "Looks like Ernie is okay. Or he has his lawyer. Why do we care?"

"Ernesto Miranda," Tony said. "I love that warning."

"Did your computer remember that?" She was smiling.

"No, I did. Semester of specific American history at MIT back in the day. I met Rhodey in that class," Tony said. "It makes sense Mr. Bad wants to stop any shackles on cops. He does love his vigilante justice."

"We have to find a name for him," Nat said. "I really can't take your constant flow of nicknames."

"Think of a good one, I'll stick with it," Tony said.

They went to lunch at a diner and Nat put her purse on the table. The waitress came by and Nat immediately turned on her girlfriend persona. She kept touching Tony's hand and it very much almost felt sincere. He admired her abilities. When the waitress left, Nat turned back into herself. The one he knew and mostly platonically loved. He missed his fiancee. The one he would never ever get back, who was long lost to the collapsed timeline. He looked at Natasha again.

Maybe he was done with his mourning.

He idly tracked a tall, thin woman with straight blonde hair and thought he would never be done mourning.

Nat said, "We should just call him Bradley. As far as we know, it's his name."

"Boring," Tony said.

The waitress came with their very bland and highly awful food. "This is the part nostalgia gets wrong," Tony said. "The food sucks."

"I still don't get this. This time," she gestured with her hand in a loop. Nat pressed her lips together.

"We don't necessarily have to get it. I understand it, of course, but honestly, not completely. And we're here because no one else really volunteered because they all have families and people who care about them," Tony said. "They can't disappear and come back three months later."

"Nebula cares about us," Nat said, very nearly sincerely.

"You know, I think that's true. She thinks we're great."

"That Kree woman liked you," Nat said. "The one with all the guns."

"Doesn't narrow it down," Tony said. "I'm not dating right now, anyway. Definitely not in 1963. And probably not either of those Kree women."

X

Peter would go to Tony's new place in Manhattan and they would review the notes the other Tony and Natasha sent back from time. "So cool," Peter said.

"I know," Tony said, grinning. "I feel a little bad for both of them. Trapped out of time and all that."

"Yeah, but they also get to start over. In a way. Also, they were space bounty hunters working for Nebula." Peter couldn't help the excitement in his voice. "That's a really cool job. They're out in space sometimes. All the time. Strange new worlds, new life forms. So much to learn."

"I know," Tony said. "So cool."

Peter sat back and played with the tablet they got their notes on. "They say they're pretty close to finding Mr. Cooper."

"And no one else has discovered the Cooper method, that we know of," Tony said.

"Dr. Foster said she's sure this guy is actually from 2039, so, so far the only people who understand time travel are us," Peter said. "Though I guess more people could discover it and come back here. And we only hope they make obvious mistakes -"

"Like stabbing you," Tony said, lightly but not really.

"That was kind of an obvious mistake. But mostly because Dr. Strange noticed it. Not the stabbing me part, the time travel. If someone tests it better so it's not crude?" Peter fidgeted, one big fidget of tapping toe and random itching.

"The timeline defends itself," Tony said. "But only sometimes."

"But only sometimes. And what if we could change some things, and the timeline wouldn't do anything and it would be better? I. I would -"

"Me, too," Tony said. "I wonder if I could just, maybe I'm not allowed to save my parents, but what if I could get rid of Obie? Just that. But what if there's no Iron Man?"

Peter rubbed his mouth. Then he said, "Iron Man is pretty important. But you have to balance that against your own, in, suffering, right? Objectively, the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few or one? Not to quote Star Trek, I'm sure MJ has a more, like, elegant construction, but that's the basics." He looked at his hand like it was super interesting and they sat in silence.

"That's, that's a super bummer, kid. Fuck. Let's look at nursery decoration. Pepper left it to me."

Peter leaned forward. "Okay, I read mobiles are good, but only for the first few months and you have to think about choking hazards-"

"Yes," Tony said, emphatically. "Which mobile is the correct mobile?"


End file.
